Moscow, Friday, March 19 -- A Soviet Air Force officer, who yesterday became the first man to leave an orbiting spacecraft and float in space, was still circling the earth early today in the capsule
with a fellow astronaut.

Lieut. Col. Aleksei A. Leonov, 30 years old, left the two-man Voskhod 2 as it passed over the Soviet Union while completing its first orbit and beginning its second. He stayed outside the cabin for 10 minutes, according to Tass, official Soviet press
agency.

The spaceship, piloted by Col. Pavel I. Belyayev, 39, was launched at 10 A.M. Moscow time yesterday, 2 A.M.. Eastern Standard Time. The launching site, not announced at first, was later said to be the cosmodrome Baekonur in Kazsakhstan. All previous Soviet
manned space shots have originated there.

[Vasily Seleznev, a leading Soviet space official, said on Moscow television Thursday that "the target before us now is the moon, and we hope to reach it in no distant future," The Associated Press reported.]

New Shot Rumored

There was widespread speculation that a second spaceship might be launched sometime today in an attempt to effect for the first time a link-up of two crafts in space.

As Colonel Leonov traveled through space tethered to his ship at a speed of nearly five miles a second, he was shielded by a specially equipped space suit. This protected him from the intense heat of the sun.

Specialists said that even the slightest penetration of his suit by the sun's rays would have caused instant death.

If the five-yard rope lifeline that connected him with the ship had broken, he could have been lost, orbiting the earth as a human satellite. His body would have burned up on reentry after a week or perhaps months of orbiting.

No Steering Device

His space suit was not equipped with any devices by which he could have steered his way back to the spacecraft.

Voskhod 2 was orbiting every 90.9 minutes. The apogee, or highest point, of its orbit was approximately 309 miles, higher than any previous manned space flight. Its perigee, or low point, was given as approximately 108 miles.

American space experts said they thought the launching was performed by the same vehicle used in earlier Soviet space flights, developing a thrust of about 900,000 pounds. The fact that the orbit reached higher than previous ones was not thought to indicate
any new capability in this respect since a single launching system can be used to produce orbits in a variety of shapes.

The frequencies on which the spaceship is transmitting information are:

17.365, 18.035 and 143.625 megacycles, according to the official announcement.

Millions of Soviet and European television viewers watched the latest Soviet space exploit.

They saw Colonel Leonov emerge from a hatch in the roof of the capsule. He stood in the hatch for a while, moving his left hand as if signaling.

Then he pulled up his legs and, holding onto a handrail, pushed them out horizontally, like an athlete on parallel bars.

Then he pushed himself away from the ship but remained connected to it by the lifeline.

He floated, at first with stiffly outstretched legs. Then he did a slow-motion somersault in the wake of the ship, turned around like a man rolling in the snow, and finally stood stiffly on his head, seemingly motionless.

The earth could be seen in the background. It moved from right to left like a lightly colored panel being moved across a darkened stage.

At first, the flat edge could be seen. Then it filled the screen, then it moved off to the left with its clean right edge clearly visible.

Colonel Leonov was feeling well both during his period outside the cabin and after he re-entered the spacecraft, an announcement said.

At 5:30 A.M. today, Moscow time, Tass reported that the spaceship had completed its 13th orbit. Shortly before, an official announcement had said that all systems aboard were functioning normally.

Biological research conducted during the flight, the announcement said, yielded information about physiological reactions of man during free movement in space and about the nature of the motions in these conditions.

During the night, Tass also reported, the two astronauts slept in turns, rested and breakfasted. They had respiration rates between 18 and 20 a minute and pulse rates of 72 to 78 a minute, the press agency said. Both were feeling well at last report.

Tass further said that radio communications with the space ship had been re-established during the 13th orbit. For five orbits before that, Voskhod 2 was in contact with the earth by short wave radio only, since it did not pass over the Soviet Union during
these orbits.

Earlier, while television was showing Colonel Leonov floating in space, an announcer said:

"You see, one can work in space."

Shown on Live Telecast

The pictures of Colonel Leonov outside the cabin were on videotape. Later, during the seventh orbit of the space ship, there was a live telecast showing the two astronauts strapped inside their cabin with sunlight streaming in through the portholes.

The dramatic Soviet achievement was believed to have widened the advance of the Soviet space program over the American one.

Western diplomats here believe that the soviet flight had been timed to precede the Gemini shot, the first multi-manned flight by Americans, which is scheduled for next week.

Soviet leaders have often shown that they feel fiercely competitive about the space race with the United States.

Practically all the members of the Soviet Government and party leadership gathered in the Sverdlov Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace to follow the flight and watch Colonel Leonov float in space.

Greeted by Brezhnev

When Voskhod [Sunrise] passed over the Soviet Union again on a later orbit. Leonid I. Brezhnev, the First Party Secretary, picked up a white phone on a table and spoke to the astronauts.

Reading slowly and impassively from a prepared script, he congratulated them in the name of the leadership. The scene was televised.

Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin was sitting next to Mr. Brezhnev and the other leaders, including President Anastas I. Mikoyan, were at their side.

Television viewers could hear the muffled voice of one astronaut as he answered Mr. Brezhnev's greeting. Then the leaders clapped and Mr. Brezhnev said:

"We applaud you, we wait for you in Moscow."

The formal scene had nothing in common with the relaxed extravaganza staged on such occasions by Nikita S. Khrushchev, the former Premier.

When the Soviet Union's last spaceship, Voskhod I, was launched last Oct. 12, Mr. Khrushchev spoke to the crew in a gay, exuberant and improvised give-and-take at the end of their first orbit. But when they returned, he was no longer around to welcome
them back.

Early in the flight yesterday, Colonel Leonov sent a message assuring the "Leninist Central Committee of the Communist party [and] the Soviet Government" that he and his co-pilot would do their best.

Neither Mr. Brezhnev nor Mr. Kosygin was mentioned in the astronaut's message. Previous spacemen had always sent their messages to Mr. Khrushchev and had praised and thanked him by name.

The astronauts sent fewer messages than in the past to governments and Communists regimes.

A special prominence was given to Raul Castro of Cuba, who is in the Soviet Union. He came here earlier in the month for the conference of Communist parties.

Mr. Castro was quoted by Tass as having spoken to Colonel Belyayev by radio telephone and invited the astronauts to Cuba. He asked the pilot what Cuba looked like from space, and Colonel Belyayev answered:

"It is very beautiful, and its green colors are lovely."

It was not clear whether Mr. Castro was with the Soviet leaders at the Kremlin or whether he spoke from another station.

Yesterday's shot was the eighth manned Soviet space flight, the second with more than one person in one craft.

Colonels Belyayev and Leonov thus are the Soviet Union's 10th and 11th astronauts. The announcement of the successful launching came simultaneously and solemnly and triumphantly- over all Soviet radio stations at 11 in the morning, an hour after
blastoff.

The announcement said that the Voskhod 2 had entered an orbit close to the prescribed one. The two pilots were well and conducted their assigned tasks, the announcement said.

The live telecast of the interior of the cabin during the seventh orbit showed Colonel Bulayev reclining in the left background.

In the foreground, immediately in front of the camera were the hands of Colonel Leonov as he made entries in the craft's log, turning the pages.

Sunlight coming in through the porthole could be clearly seen.

The pictures of Colonel Leonov floating in space were taken from a camera rigged on the outside of the ship looking across the top toward the hatch.

The official announcement said that Colonel Leonov had inspected the outside of the ship, taken movie shots and made visual observations of the earth from outer space.

The announcement described Colonel Leonov as an officer who had "studied the design of the spaceship to perfection and who is thoroughly prepared to fulfill complex tasks in space flight."

Colonel Belyayev at 39 is the oldest Soviet astronaut to have gone into orbit. The others have been in their late twenties or early thirties.

In a reference to the colonel's age, Tass said that it was "logical to conjecture that fewer and fewer demands are being made on the physical condition of those traveling in outer space."

A Soviet expert speaking on television later said that the technical demands on Colonel Belyayev on the other hand were tremendous, especially during the period when he directed Colonel Leonov as he left the cabin, moved around in outer space and re-entered
the cabin.

The expert pointed out that Colonel Belyayev, as the ship's commander, was in control of this operation.

Constantin F. Feoktistov, the scientist who was one of three crew members of the first Voskhod shot last October, wrote in Izvestia last night that a principal objective of the flight was the testing of methods for getting in and out of a cabin during
flight.

In an article written before the experiment had taken place, he wrote that success would make it possible "to perform assembly and repair work on the ship during flight and finally to go from one ship to another."

His article described Voskhod as having a decompression chamber through which Col. Leonov had to pass when leaving and entering the cabin.

The chamber, he wrote, had an inside hatch that the astronauts close before opening the outside hatch.

On a televised discussion of technical features of the flight later in the evening, a Soviet specialist said the second orbit had been chosen for Colonel Leonov's experiment because at that time of the day radiation and sun heat were smallest and
there were no sun flares.

Laymen observers here had been wondering why such an early stage of the long flight had been chosen for the experiment rather than a later orbit that presumably would have made it possible to bring him back more quickly for medical examination on the
ground.

The space suit used by Colonel Leonov when he stepped out of Voskhod 2 yesterday seems to have been designed for short-duration life support outside the craft.

For the ten minutes the astronaut was in space environment, he was tethered to the craft by a lifeline that supplied the space suit with oxygen and with air for ventilation and carried communication lines much in the manner a deep sea diver is connected
with the surface.

More advanced space suits designed for prolonged work in space, in assembling of space platforms or for landing on the moon, will probably carry a life-support pack on the back.

The packs would also be equipped with low-thrust rocket engines to enable the astronaut to maneuver in space and return to his space craft under his own power.

A commentator for Tass described Colonel Leonov's space suit as a "miniature hermetic cabin" consisting of a metal helmet with transparent visor, a multi-layered pressure suit, gloves and specially designed footwear.

The suit was said to be equipped with its own power supply for communications and with a disposal system for body functions.

Pressure Limited

According to Tass, it is impossible to simulate atmospheric pressure within the suit because it would then inflate like a football and "man would turn into a statue unable to bend legs and arms."

Soviet research was said to have shown that the air pressure inside the suit should be at least four tenths of an atmosphere, which is the pressure of air at sea level. Even then, the commentator said, the space suit inflates and bellows-like devices
are required at the joints to enable the astronaut to move about and work.

To prevent the spaceman from suffering from the so-called bends disease at low pressure, physiologists hit upon the idea of eliminating nitrogen from his body before he enters the space environment. This is achieved by prolonged respiration of oxygen
that 'literally washes nitrogen out of the body tissues, permitting the pressure to be safely reduced," Tass said.

The presence of nitrogen in the blood stream causes bubbles to form in the blood when air pressure is too rapidly decompressed. This condition, known as the bends, is often deadly. Deep-sea divers, among other kinds of workers, face this danger.

The space suit was said to be equipped with an air conditioning system through which ventilating air at room temperature was pumped to carry away excess heat and moisture exuded by perspiration.

Used Air Expelled

The used air consisting of a mixture of carbon dioxide, water vapor and oxygen, is ejected into the space environment, presumably through a helmet connection.

To protect the spaceman from the heat of the sun's rays and from the cold in the shadow of the earth or of the ship, the space suit is covered with a thermal insulating layer and is coated with a special light colored material that deflects head
rays.

The suit worn by Colonel Leonov appears to be similar to the advanced form of a space suit to be used in the United States Gemini program. In its final form, the Gemini suit was supposed to provide capability for short duration life support outside the
spacecraft.